In Need of Mental Help

Normally, Monday is Throw Screenshots At The Blog Day, but I didn’t get around to properly editing the screenies, so today…you get the Adventures of the Fail Tree.

My baby druid only has 4 buttons. A HoT, a smallish heal thingy with another HoT, Swiftmend, and Healing Touch. HT has quickly become equated with Greater Heal in my mind-it’s a thing that I try not to cast too often, because it’s slow as fuck. Big, but slow. The adjustment part comes from not having a little heal to spam in its place-it became a game of wiggling around and wondering if Swiftmend would come off CD in time. Sometimes the mage died. Sorry, mage. AoE less?

I feel comfortable enough healing 5 mans by now, but I have discovered a massive problem with playing a tree. See, I throw my HoTs on the tank and then I…wait. During those long seconds of waiting I get distracted-by my cat, my party chat, or by guild chat discussing whether or not spit is a good enough lube for anal sex.

No really, we had that discussion. I screen shotted it and everything!

Anyway.

So I get distracted, and I start typing, right? Standing there…typing…not following the group. And then the tank runs ahead and pulls another 2-3 packs of mobs, and I go OH SHIT, and I don’t have penance to make up for my lollygagging anymore so…SPLAT goes the tank.

Because I was typing.

Ahem.

I think that maybe I need a Swiftmend maco of Amber Wasn’t Paying Attention, because this is going to be a long haul to 80…

/hots

/sees something shiny

/wanders off

(To explain the title, aside from the obvious: my poor little druid was dubbed Psychiatree. Because I need some, see, after having that many healers…)

Waiting between HoTs is tree dance time. I have a /dance macro to press and it’s usually the tank, but it’s whomever I have targeted at the time. It’s also tree melee time, though I know it annoys the shit out of tanks sometimes. Along with mages who joke about getting the might pally buff in raids, I like to see how high I can crit with my branches. I got a 263 crit once.

My own personal whack-a-mole game (for times of extreme boredom) is to never let a hot fall off the tank. Need rejuv, regrowth (hot part) and at least 1 stack of lifebloom. See them corners light up in Grid. Waste mana. WHEEEE!

If you always have a hot on, you just snap off a swiftmend when you need it. Remember, preparedness is important for druids. Our best oh-crap button only works if we’ve already had the forethought to throw a hot on the person (why I hated the stupid ice block on KT because, dammit, penance works beautifully, but swiftmend needs you to be psychic, or to do the GCD two-step.)

Stack the hots before damage comes in. If you are still stacking them when the tank enters combat, you’re making life difficult for yourself and may have to play catch up.

Low level druid healing is a little rough. I found that I got a lot more use out of glyphing HT until I finally picked up Nourish. Still is not good for spamming but at least I felt like it was more useful to fill in all the omg i wasn’t paying attention moments.

I (who admittedly am only to level 38 on my druid, but I’m a priest in “real” life!) also <3 the Healing Touch glyph. Found one sitting around in the GB, and knew that precious few go the HT route at high levels, so I threw it in there. And I actually really enjoyed it. The math sounds bad if you just look at it (reduces cast time by 50%, mana cost by 25%, and amount healed by 50%), but taking the spell from unused to "actually helpful, especially for those spoiled by the ass-saving nature of Penance" is worth it to me.

And theoretically, on rare occasions, we also have an @Orithea! On less rare and more wordy occasions, we also have a James. Who does not have a Twitter because he is fail? Anyway, there had to be some bubbles in this blog somewhere.